Lucky Turtle

“Two great love affairs—one between characters, the other with the wilds of Montana as its original inhabitants knew it—surge through this engaging, audacious novel. Every page hums with life and energy.” —Andrea Barrett, author of The Voyageof the Narwhal and Archangel

Bill Roorbach is back with an immersive love story of two kindred souls in a world determined to tear them apart.

When Cindra Zoeller, sixteen, is sent to a reform camp in Montana, she’s a young, privileged white girl who has evaded more severe punishment for her crime. Even at Camp Challenge, she gets special treatment, unlike the punishment many of the girls face. She becomes transfixed by Lucky, a watchful, capable, and mysterious camp employee, and as the connection between them grows stronger, Lucky and Cindra quickly become lovers. They escape into the Rocky Mountains and create an idyllic life, living off Lucky’s vast knowledge of the wilderness.

But they can run from the outside world for only so long, and the consequences of their naïve fantasy of a future together—and circumstances shaped by their skin color—will keep them apart for decades. Lucky goes to prison, and Cindra finds herself in a cosseted and carefully surveilled life, circumscribed by a man who claims to be her rescuer. But for Cindra, there will never be another Lucky, and she knows she must find him, the only man she's ever fully trusted, her soulmate.

For readers of Richard Russo, Jane Smiley, and John Irving, Lucky Turtle is a deeply engrossing love story from one of our most entertaining and perceptive writers.